Border Crises - Past and Present

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Preston Huennekens discuss the border surges under the Trump and Biden administrations. How has President Biden handled the surges at the border and why have members of the media been restricted from accessing detention facilities? What is President Biden hiding?

Show Notes

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Intro:

Today on Understanding Immigration: border crises - past and present.

Spencer:
All right welcome back to another episode of FAIR’s Understanding Immigration podcast. This is Spencer Raley FAIR’s director of research and I’m joined as always by Matthew Tragesser from our media team and Preston Huennekens from our lobby department. So even members of the media and the Biden administration now are finally admitting that we have a crisis on our hands at the southern border however both the media and the current administration are downplaying the seriousness of the situation Biden is blaming the situation on his predecessor despite doing everything in his power to dismantle border security and interior immigration enforcement and many open borders media personnel and members of Congress who trash the Trump administration over the immigration crisis of 2019 are just straight up ignoring the current situation altogether so I want to dive into the hypocrisy of all of this and the two-sidedness that seems to be so prevalent in this discussion but before we do that Preston really quick what are just some of the basic facts that are going on right now I know we've talked about it seems like in every podcast we've done recently but just refresh us on what's going on and how did it does it compare or differentiate from the crisis in 2019?

Preston:
Yeah so right now essentially what is happening is that so far we've seen close to about 500,000 apprehensions at the southern border in only a few months of the fiscal year and to give everyone a sense of how different that was from the last fiscal year we barely got over 400,000 so it's pretty remarkable that we've gotten to this level and it's really entirely because of the rhetoric and the policy decisions of the Biden administration and so I want to take our listeners back to 2019 which was under the Trump administration and kind of what happened with that border surge and how it's different from the one today. So in 2019 there wasn't really a single reason that people started coming to the border in big waves, Trump of all people did not campaign on inviting illegal aliens into the country and so it was actually surprising given his rhetoric that there would be a border surge you would think because of what he was saying what his advisors were saying what Republicans in the Senate and in the House were campaigning on that most illegal aliens wouldn't want to come to the border because they would think that it was closed but if we if we dive a little deeper and this was discussed at the time there was a Trump effect where between 2017 and 2018 apprehensions were relatively low because the smugglers and people in Central America took his word that he was going to be really tough on immigration and that they were going to build a wall no one was going to be able to get in but by 2019 people started to realize that nothing had really changed in fact in December 2018 the government shut down over the question of border wall funding many of our listeners probably remember that and Trump eventually signed a budget in I think it was either January or February of 2019 that included no funding for the border and instead he just declared a national emergency so that he could move money from the defense department to start border wall construction but at this time smugglers and human traffickers south of the border saw this and they kind of said to themselves wait a minute nothing has changed the laws are still the same and so then in the spring and summer of 2019 when it traditionally warms up and when we do see more of a growth of apprehensions we started seeing huge numbers of asylum seeking aliens and some of them were coming in in migrant caravans that were in the news at the time and so Trump and his department of homeland security really struggled at first to get a hold of this because of Congressional inaction house democrats refused to address the issue they really saw it as a humanitarian issue and that we should try to get as we shouldn't be detained people at all and on the other hand republicans in Congress and president Trump saw this as a national security issue that there was obviously something horribly wrong with our current laws that was allowing this and so because of this inaction because of this gridlock the president and the department of homeland security then had to kind of act unilaterally through executive actions and so the two big things that they did was they created the migrant protection protocols which were commonly referred to as the Remain in Mexico program where apprehended aliens would be given a court date the same that they would normally in the U.S. but instead of being released into the interior of the country they were transferred to Mexico and so those that wanted to pursue their asylum claims in the us they could do that but they had to be living in Mexico they couldn't just come to the united states and then move to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles or Florida they had to stay in Mexico which was a huge disincentive for people to begin the dangerous journey to the border because the whole goal is to get into the united states it's not to get into Mexico and then the second of those two actions was that president Trump entered into pretty much de facto safe third country agreements with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and so because of that migrants from any of those countries would have to have applied for asylum in another country before they came to the U.S. and if they hadn't done that they weren't able to apply for asylum in the united states and that that really did stop most of what we saw at the southern border in 2019 the numbers really came down after that and then and then in the following year they were pretty low but a lot also they were low because of the coveted 19 pandemic and the title 42 protections that we put in place but they were low nonetheless and a lot of that was because of the migrant protection protocols and because of the safe third country agreements that we had with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador and so let's then fast forward to today where the crisis is entirely due to two things the first is that President Joe Biden campaigned on giving a pathway to citizenship for every illegal alien present in the united states and Kamala Harris when she was running for president did the same thing so human smugglers human traffickers and people in Central and South America who wanted to come to the us and make asylum claims to get into the country they saw that and said oh I need to get in to the country before this happens and then second within the first two weeks of becoming President Joe Biden rescinded both the migrant protection protocols and he ended those asylum agreements with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador so there were no there was nothing that the united states could fall back on to prevent asylum seeking aliens from entering the U.S. we pretty much reverted in many ways to the status quo that we had with President Obama where illegal aliens would come to the border they would apply for asylum and then they would be let loose into the united states and they'd have a court date sometime in the next two years it's usually a three to four year process for them to then be removed and by that point they've settled in the united states and they don't want to leave so that's pretty much where we are today and the main difference being that the Trump administration took action to end the crisis pretty immediately whereas Joe Biden and his administration are seemingly doing nothing to change this into and to reverse the trends

Spencer:
Yeah I think that's I think that's a really good point it's probably the biggest differentiating factor is that when a crisis began at the border of the Trump administration they quickly took action to try to solve it and I think it's also important to mention that a lot of the crisis we saw in 2019 was fueled by a fantastic economy in the united states whereas a lot of the economies in Mexico and Central America were not as strong at the time and so you of course had an uptick in migrants coming to the united states hoping to take advantage of that economy and to loose still loose immigration laws like you mentioned and another thing I think it's important to mention is there were a lot of organizations inside of the united states that were essentially aiding and abetting this asylum fraud they were telling potential illegal aliens how to get past the initial credible fear interview so they're released into the united states and because of that more and more and more people realized hey I don't even have to like sneak across the border and stay hidden I can go to the border turn myself in say a few essentially magic words and then I’ll get released into the country and since the backlog of cases is years I can essentially settle down make a life here and who knows what'll happen in the future so there's a whole lot that went into that and like you mentioned the Trump administration took steps to eliminate those loopholes to close the border and we saw apprehension numbers go down significantly I think it's very important and concerning to note that now unemployment is still approximately double what it was during the 2019 order crisis but you've still got surges coming so what's it going to look like if especially if the buying administration continues with their open borders proposals what's it going to look like once our unemployment rate goes down once our economy continues to improve and more and more and more people keep surging to the southern border and Matthew I wanna just change gears just a little bit and turn to you in 2019 we saw we saw members of Congress posing for photos and crying in front of detention centers and President Biden blasted former president Trump's handling of the issue and the media coined this whole false kids and cages narrative to def to fame the Trump administration but like we just mentioned the situation seems far worse under Biden today or at least poised to be far worse as we go into the busy months for apprehension so my question is this is the media is Congress giving the Biden administration the same treatment that they gave Trump?

Matthew:
Well first let me reiterate that what we're seeing in the first two months of Biden in office is nothing like we've seen under the Trump administration at any point I mean apprehension totals are just a crisis level figures and I will say that from a media perspective it has been kind of a mixed response you definitely have members of the media and certain outlets taking the replacing the blame rather on president Trump and his policies they were saying well a surge was already happening under him which I don't see how that was even remotely similar to what's happening now the Washington Post for instance had analysis just a few days ago saying that well the reason that southern border apprehensions are soaring right now is because they are in line with usual seasonal increases and I look at this and I’m just scratching my head like this is no way there's no way this is in line with usual seasonal increases for instance February’s total apprehension figures were the largest for the month since 2007 more than a decade the number of unaccompanied minors who are apprehended in February last month were the largest for that demographic on record and then even Mayorkas the head of DHS has stated recently quote we are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years so clearly these are crisis figures this is not just a usual seasonal increase and you definitely have members of the media kind of trying to downplay this situation which does it's a disservice to the American public it's not truthful it's misleading but something that's very interesting too is they're not totally covering the bond administration and what I mean by this is a lot of members of the media both in the left and right are upset with how president Biden and his administration have limited access to these facilities at the southern border to the media they're basically they there's no tours going on reporters can't interview anyone at these facilities or any immigration official at the border all these requests are sent back up to DC so there's more controlled messaging so there has been frustration with this and just the first photos that we saw these detention facilities came from project veritas that it's not like legitimate kind of Washington post for CNN or any those types of outlets I mean this was a very strange thing that project veritas was the first organization to release the conditions and the photos and what was going on these facilities so it's kind of like a mixture you definitely have outlets and members of the media covering the bond administration saying that not really at crisis levels it's no reason to raise the alarm yet but you also have members who are frustrated with them they want more access to these immigration facilities to get in contact with border patrol agents and people who ever see and manage the facilities and major gus has essentially put a gag order on these people the southern border he doesn't want them speaking to the media so it's a very complicated situation I think the American public deserves to see more what's going on just from the few photos that I’ve saw I’m sure that you guys have seen I mean it looks like terrible conditions a lot of people are crammed in these facilities they're not meant to handle this many migrants especially family units and unaccompanied minors we're also in a pandemic so putting them in these kind of tight spaces is detrimental to their health so it's really a complicated situation and another thing I want to bring up quickly is where is the squad with this AOC, Omar as you mentioned spencer they were doing photo ops at the southern border just making like the situation a lot more sensitive and emotional and now it's the same situation if not worse and they're radio silent there's no comments from them they're not scrutinizing the blind administration they're radio silent and that's a problem that's very hypocritical and they should know better that it's the same thing going on if not worse.

Spencer:
One of the whole reasons that AOC and her whole squad gained prominence in Congress is because they were essentially the Donald Trump of the left they were outsiders they called out the establishment they were very vocal but we're not seeing that as much anymore now that they've got a seat at the table and this crisis is very much an example of that they're keep them silent because they don't want to get in trouble with the leaders of the democratic party and that brings me to this Preston Schumer and Pelosi again we're all up in arms about the border situation in 2019 even some republicans voiced their concern you touched on this a little bit but what is happening in Congress in response to this is there anything happening that would help stem the tide of this border cross crisis or is it continuing to be full steam ahead on the amnesty proposals that we've been talking about for weeks now.

Preston:
No there hasn't been anything in Congress that has at least substantively tried to fix what's going on at the southern border and in many ways it's actually significantly worse than it was in 2019 because at least in 2019 both parties were able to admit that there was a problem republicans weren't pretending that there wasn't a huge issue at the southern border whereas today in 2021 at least from first of all the Biden administration refuses to address this as a crisis they call it a very big problem Mayorkas, DHS Secretary Mayorkas has referred to it that way and so on the Congressional side democrats are somewhat afraid to acknowledge that this is a crisis and if they do talk about it they only talk about it in the sense that they did in 2019 about the humanitarian conditions without really pausing to think about why all of these people are coming here and it's entirely because our laws are easily abused most of these people have been told correctly by their smugglers and by human traffickers that all they have to do is come to the U.S. and claim asylum and they'll be let into the country and so there hasn't been a real sense of urgency on the democratic side of things in Congress to address the issue beyond just letting them go as soon as humanly possible and on the republican side there has been obviously concern about what's going on but the republicans are not in control of either house of Congress so they can't for instance hold hearings they at least in 2019 the republicans held control of the Senate so they were able to hold hearings about it they were able to question the DHS secretary at the time and the border patrol chief and the DBP commissioner on what was going on and what tools they needed to reverse the flow that's just simply not happening today so while this was going on the democrats in the house should chose to vote on two amnesty bills which we've covered in previous podcasts H.R. 6 the American Dream and Promise Act and then H.R. 1603 the Farm Workforce Modernization Act both of which give a pathway to citizenship to illegal aliens that are here in the country and so again just talk about the messaging aspect of this as we are dealing with this huge flow of people coming to the southern border where we don't have enough space to detain people the democrats in the house chose to roll out the welcome mat in a sense by saying well we're going to legalize these illegal aliens and then we're going to just kind of clap our hands and move on and at least on the republican side there have been bills introduced that would stop this there's one in particular that fair supports and that fair has actually published a letter endorsing it which is the asylum abuse reduction act which was introduced in the Senate by Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and in the House by Congressman Kevin Hern also of Oklahoma and it's a pretty straightforward bill it forces asylum-seeking aliens to apply in their home countries at American consulates and American embassies where an asylum officer in in their home country can determine whether or not they have a credible fear which is the first step in making an asylum claim and it also raises the credible fear threshold back to what it should be which is political persecution religious persecution because of immutable characteristics things of that nature and it would remove the this kind of strange category that we currently have which is I’m not making enough money in my home country so I want to come to the U.S. and then often I’m afraid of criminal activity in my neighborhood so I want to move to the U.S. those should not be a part of our asylum process that is not what asylum is made for asylum is made for people who are being persecuted by their governments or in other extreme cases it's not simply economic insecurity and fear of domestic crime that that simply is not applicable to our asylum laws and so that that bill would certainly change a lot of what we're seeing at the border but again we're in a divided Congress and it's extremely unlikely that the two parties are going to come together on anything that that would stem this crisis so in a sense unfortunately we are left with the bible administration which they created the crisis by their words and by ending the successful asylum policies of the previous administration I don't get the sense that they're going to suddenly make fools of themselves and go back on their campaign promises and go back to the Trump era asylum agreements or reinstate the micro protection protocols so we're pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place at this point.

Spencer:
Yeah absolutely that the bills you're talking about here that would eliminate asylum fraud they make perfect sense and one thing I do want to know is they include clauses and protections for those who are found to have credible asylum cases which was one of the initial concerns about that bill so it really makes no sense why someone would oppose that unless they want individuals coming to the united states being released into the country there's just no rational reason why you would oppose it otherwise and something else that we haven't touched on yet I think is very important is that early polling has shown that immigration has been Biden's weakest point with the American people even during the immigration crisis in 2019 there were a number of polls that came out that showed more than 50 percent of Americans supported the Trump initiative such as the migrant protection protocols plurality supported building the wall and we haven't seen those figures necessarily come down a lot I think a big reason for that is the entire COVID-19 issue we see that's already starting to develop thanks to this to this border crisis the media blasted Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and many might agree that that was for good reasons but just recently Texas Governor Greg Abbott sounded the alarm that there are COVID outbreaks happening in detention centers and at border towns where these migrants these caravans are being released and I think a big reason for this is most migrants these caravans they aren't wearing masks virtually none of them are vaccinated and in some areas border patrol is so overwhelmed now that they're releasing these illegal aliens into the country without first testing them for COVID-19 or enforcing any kind of mandatory quarantine so I guess again maybe I’m beating a dead horse here but why isn't the media covering this public health hazard like they have other coronavirus stories because it's very clear that the American public is concerned about this it seems like we're finally turning the corner on COVID-19 hopefully anyways with the vaccine rolling out more and more people being vaccinated why are we putting ourselves at risk of taking one step forward and five steps backward by allowing this public health crisis to potentially develop.

Matthew:
I mean it certainly is a real public health crisis you mentioned Texas I know in Brownsville for instance just last month more than 100 illegal aliens were released into Brownsville after crossing the country unlawfully and they tested positive as well all 108 of them and then they were released into the interior of the country with some of these migrants saying that they were traveling to North Carolina to California I mean really all over the country and I presumably assume that it would be on public transportation and you have it is a legitimate concern it's especially with all these facilities that are completely at capacity it's like they're being released they can't even be the tent anymore and the body administration has done nothing to stop these surges they've done nothing to address the public health component of this surge and it really is something that as you said Spencer it's really not talked about at all in the media and this is a very important element to this border crisis we're still in the middle of a pandemic it didn't disappear automatically and it's really mind-boggling I have no idea why it's not a more of a focal point.

Spencer:
I actually found it a little bit ironic I believe it was yesterday Ted Cruz went to a press conference and he's been immune he's had his vaccine but he didn't have a mask on and they started fussing at him for not having a mask on yeah perhaps he should have had one on but his press conference was largely about the crisis at the southern border in the public health crisis and how the media isn't covering that so some of that is mind-boggling and what really bothers me about it is it's not giving it's not it's not providing a service to the American people the three of us we do this for a living we know how to vet media sources we have our own sources but most Americans still rely on accurate information from the media not to just to form their opinions but to keep themselves safe and so members of the media and as well as our president and members of Congress have a responsibility to ensure that accurate information on this is being represented and put forth in the media and that policy is created that protects the interests of American citizens now I want to change gears just one more time and address this one this question to you again Matthew and that's that this this doesn't seem to be President Biden's first rodeo when it comes to responsibility for an immigration crisis there was there was a in some ways quite similar situation that occurred in back in 2014 when he was still Vice President so how does that compare to the 2019 crisis and the crisis we're seeing right now.

Matthew:
So it's very similar in a lot of ways in terms of the hot spot for these kind of surges was in 2014 the Rio Grande Valley which is in the southern tip of Texas that's where the hot spot is today in terms of the demographics the majority of the people who are coming to our border unlawfully are unaccompanied minors family units the vast majority are coming from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador as well as Mexico but what's interesting is in 2014 when president Biden was vice president at the time I remember that the DHS secretary his name was Jay Johnson and he said that a bad day for immigration officials down at the border during this crisis was apprehending a thousand people a day right now immigration officials representing upwards of five thousand per day and the administration still won't call it a crisis it's a mere challenge to them and so clearly it's similar in terms of the where they're coming from the demographics but in terms of the actual figures I mean this is way more of a problem than it was in 2014 and I think the large reason why we saw a large surge in 2014 is similar to what why they're coming right now in 2021 it's these radical immigration policies and promises by democrats and so in 2014 President Obama and his administration they were essentially kind of reducing interior immigration enforcement or country they helped proliferate sanctuary cities so now these cities like Chicago, New York, LA the local and state police couldn't cooperate with ice and that basically meant that if you were an illegal alien in any of these cities you couldn't be deported you had a very low chance of being deported so sanctuary cities were growing in 2014 yet DACA that was introduced in 2012 and it's kind of similar today in the sense that there are president Biden has demonstrated he wants to implement these radical immigration policies the pathway to citizenship to virtually every single legal alien in our country halting wall construction calling to end deportations for 100 days calling to end private immigration detention so the promises and the policy are actually I’d argue way worse than what they were in 2014 they've shifted much further to the left but this is something that president Biden he's been a part of twice now 2014 and now and I think if one thing to take away from the 2014 crisis is that he and president Obama oversaw a number of these detention facilities being created and constructed all across the southern border and a lot of those facilities were abused by President Trump and they're still being used today and so I think if anything because of those surges in 2014 that's one big thing to take away is President Obama and President Biden oversaw these detention facilities being created in response to the large numbers of family units and unaccompanied minors.

Spencer:
Interestingly enough you're seeing more of that now a lot of border patrol agents are being pulled off of the border in their in their duties in in preventing illegal immigration instead are putting up temporary detention facilities and overseeing those and overseeing the process of illegal aliens and I think that in itself is kind of concerning because we're talking a lot about apprehensions here the more border patrol agents you pull off the borders more individuals are getting across the border undetected in getting into the interior of the country so in addition to that you're seeing we're now on pace to have potentially the most apprehensions ever in a single fiscal year because again we we're seeing record months for early in the year and we haven't gotten to the busy season yet so if those trend lines continue as they normally do we will see a record year for apprehensions and again I don't know how anyone could say that that's not a crisis something that's unprecedented something that is occurring during a time when our economy is still weak and covet 19 is still a problem and the spread of it is still a very real risk but somehow that's not something that you need to be concerned about according to the bind administration it's just a little challenge.

Matthew:
Right I also want to add to a huge point as to why so many unaccompanied minors and family units were coming in 2014 and now is the concept of catching releases is back so if you come with a child essentially to the southern border you're apprehended and you want to seek asylum you're you can only be detained for up as much as 20 days and then you're released into the interior of the country and told to come back to your court hearing date which could be as long or as far away as six months to a year because we have such a big backlog of these asylum cases and so that is a huge magnet that occurred in 2014 but it's still occurring now the MPPS, Migrant Protection Protocols are no longer in place I just read a story this morning that in the Rio Grande valley family units are being apprehended with no court date even on paper it's just they're released and there's no date for them to show up again so it's that concept too is really motivating family units especially to come to our southern border and they know that they'll be apprehended and then released quickly and virtually never seen again.

Spencer:
Yeah you're and in fact you mentioned the backlog of cases that has grown over a million so it's something that even if we did everything right now it's going to take a long time to recover from this and as we've already noted you can't expect that to happen in the fight administration things are going to continue to get worse and I think another thing that's important to note with the catch and release policy is that even a lot of individuals with criminal records are being released into the country once they're apprehended that is something that did not occur during the Trump administration one of the things that he did when he rescinded the catch and release policies and everything that pertained to the infamous Morton Memos was ensured that if someone was apprehended that had a criminal record they were processed and either prosecuting the united states if they needed to be served their sentence and then sent back to their home country we are seeing information out of the San Diego sector of border patrol saying that 2021 looks to be potentially breaking records in terms of apprehensions of individuals convicted of sex abuse crimes and I think that's really concerning and again I think it is a it is directly stemming from the dismantling of both border and interior immigration enforcement measures that we've seen because these people are like oh I can come to the united states and have very little risk of being apprehended and deported it's worth making the journey now and that puts individuals in the united states at risk and of course it puts these potential illegal aliens and migrants at risk as well because these individuals are embedding themselves into migrant caravans and taking advantage of that whole system as well. All right well I think that's all the time we have for today we hope that you enjoyed today's episode and perhaps learned something new and as a reminder we'll be releasing new episodes every other Monday and all of our episodes are available on most platforms including Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and you can visit our website www.fairus.org and our twitter handle @FAIRImmigration to access our podcasts as well so please keep spreading the word for us we hope each and every one of you are continuing to stay safe and sound and until next time this has been Understanding Immigration presented by FAIR.